Cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.

Happy New Year! Today is Advent 1 and the first day of Year A in the Revised Common Lectionary. Always we begin again...as someone wisely said. But what are we beginning you might say? Just a new and different way to welcome the Christ Child? What's all this talk about the Second Coming? And you can only decorate your hearth and your home so much. The Collect and our readings today give us a clue about what we are called to do in this season of Advent - a season of arrival, coming, preparation and anticipation.

The prophet Isaiah tells us to beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning-hooks, and he says nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn war any more. Oh how I pray that will be true. St. Paul tells us in the letter to the Romans to lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light and live honorably. What does an armor of light look like?

And in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us to keep awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. What are the myriad ways we can stay awake and what in heaven's sake will the day the Lord comes look like?

Hmmm...what will all this look like this Advent? What obstacles will prevent these efforts from being an easy task? Though Christmas bells are ringing and there are Santas on every street corner, we have a lot to do before we can sing Joy to the World. First on my list is to search for the armor of Light. What's at the top of your list?

These words from Frederick Buechner about Advent might help.

THE HOUSE LIGHTS GO OFF and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised the baton. 

In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. 

You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you've never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart. 

The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment. 

The Salvation Army Santa Claus clangs his bell. The sidewalks are so crowded you can hardly move. Exhaust fumes are the chief fragrance in the air, and everybody is as bundled up against any sense of what all the fuss is really about as they are bundled up against the windchill factor. 

But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of yourself somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath.  

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark